Books That Made a Difference

Mini-Sheets (by Book)

he six books in this series demonstrate the power of imaginative literature to change
individual thought or even social policy, to cause readers to rethink the attitudes and
prejudices of earlier generations. Sometimes, they are works that have made it impossible
for readers to see and react to "difference," whether of race, religion,
nationality, gender, class, or sexual orientation, in the way their parents and
grandparents did. At other times, they have forced readers to reexamine inherited
attitudes toward the world around them and reformulate their place in and responsibility
to that world as citizens and individuals. They have, in a sense, broken down perceived
boundaries between "ourselves" and "others" and put human faces on
stereotypes or social problems.

Published near the mid-point of the twentieth century, Richard Wright's Native
Son (1940) was the first major novel by a black American writer to reach a wide
white audience, and its impact on our culture resounds to this day. The novel traces the
seemingly inexorable descent of a young black man, Biggar Thomas, through a pair of
meaningless murders. In doing so, it raises questions about such controversial issues as
the ability of races to coexist and the necessity of violence in precipitating cultural
change.

When Joseph Heller titled his World War II novel, Catch 22 (1961), he
introduced a new phrase into the English language. According to "Catch 22," a
person avoids a thing by accepting something worse than that thing. The novel's hapless
hero Yossarian struggles with this circular logical trap in an upside-down military world
where the phrase comes eventually to symbolize the absurdity of all institutional logic.
Heller's blackly comic satire underscores the horror of war and the power of modern
society, especially bureaucratic institutions, to destroy the human spirit.

Rarely does a single book alter the course of history, but Rachel Carson's SilentSpring (1962) did exactly that. It is a passionate and carefully documented
call to arms against the indiscriminate use of chemical pesticides and weedkillers. Based
on information Carson gained during seventeen years' work with the US Fish and Wildlife
Service, the book generated great controversy, including a campaign against it by the
chemical industry. The book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement. It
is without question one of the landmark books of the twentieth century.

Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) pits defiant anti-hero
Randle P. McMurphy against a life-denying authority figure, Nurse Ratched, in an
archetypal battle for the souls of the patients in an Oregon mental hospital. The action,
as filtered through the eyes of hospital inmate Chief Bromden, involves a fight to the
death between the forces of individualism and the those of conformity, the latter
represented by the Chief's metaphoric vision of society-at-large as the Combine, a
power-hungry machine-like force. Both widely criticized and widely admired, the novel
encapsulates many of the issues that fueled the social rebellion of the 1960s.

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) Maya Angelou recounts growing
up as a young black woman, with a constant awareness of racial difference and her own
racial self-hatred. Raised first by a hardworking, sternly religious grandmother, then
reclaimed at the age of eight by her mother and raped by her mother's boyfriend,
Marguerite blames herself for her plight and retreats into silence. That silence is
overcome with the help of Mrs. Bertha Flowers, who shares with Marguerite her love of
recited literature and poetry. Eventually, Marguerite finds her voice and, through that
voice, breaks from the cage of adversity, prejudice, and powerlessness.

Fools Crow (1986) by James Welch tells the story of the
Lone Eaters band of the Pikunis--the Blackfeet-a-t a time in the late nineteenth century
when the they can see clearly that their way of life is being irrevocably changed by the
flood of Napikwan--white people--into the northern Rockies and Great Plains. Facing their
own destruction, the Pikunis must move through self-doubt and despair if they are to
remain at peace with themselves and with the world around them. Fools Crow calls on
us to examine anew our daily actions in relation to the history of the American West.

For Further Reading

For further exploration of books that made a difference, look
for these titles at your local library or bookseller. WCH cannot provide these titles for
addition or substitution in the above series.

Chinua Achebe, Things Fall ApartDee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded KneeJames Carroll, An American RequiemDoris Grumbach, Coming Into the End ZoneZora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching GodHarper Lee, To Kill a MockingbirdAldo Leopold, Sand County AlmanacToni Morrison, BelovedRandy Shilts, And The Band Played OnAgnes Smedley, Daughter of the EarthJohn Steinbeck, The Grapes of WrathKurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse FiveAlice Walker, The Color Purple